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Egypt court to rule on Qatar 'terror' appeal in June

Sayed Fathi Saturday, May 17, 2014

CAIRO – An Egyptian court on Saturday set June 2 as a date for delivering a verdict into an appeal against an earlier ruling on a lawsuit calling on the Egyptian government to label Qatar a "state sponsor of terrorism".

The court had ruled earlier this month that it lacked the jurisdiction to rule in the lawsuit, which accuses Doha of providing a safe haven to "terrorists" and refusing to extradite them to Egypt.

But lawyer Samir Sabri, who has lodged a battery of lawsuits against ousted president Mohamed Morsi's embattled Muslim Brotherhood group and Qatar's Al Jazeera news channel, appealed the verdict.

Relations between Cairo and Doha have soured dramatically since the army ousted Morsi – Egypt's first freely elected leader – on the back of demonstrations last summer against his presidency.

Due to its critical coverage of Egypt's military-backed government by the Qatar-funded Al Jazeera channel, Egypt accuses Doha – which had been a key regional ally of the Morsi administration – of interfering in Egypt's domestic affairs.

Following Morsi's ouster and subsequent imprisonment last July, a number of his supporters fled to Qatar amid a heavy-handed crackdown on dissent by Egypt's army-backed interim authorities.